He wore a satisfied look when he saw the men that were being hustled into the car.  His uniform tightened as he swelled with the importance of his mission.  He nodded to Sheriff O’Malley and the chief of police, cast an obliquely curious glance at Starr, who stayed on the ground, and when Starr gave the word he swung his lantern to the watching fireman, and caught the handrail beside the steps.

“Fort Bliss it is; and there won’t nothing stop us, buh-lieve me!” he muttered confidentially to Starr, whom he recognized only as the man who stood behind the mystery.  The engine began to creep forward, and he swung up to the lower step.  “We may go in the ditch or something; but we’ll get there, you listen to me!”

“Go to it, and good luck,” said Starr, but there was no heartiness in his voice.  He stood with his thumbs hooked inside his gun-belt and watched the coach that held the peace of the country within its varnished walls go sliding out of the yard, its green tail lights the only illumination anywhere behind the engine.  When it had clicked over the switch and was picking up speed for its careening flight south through the cool hours of early morning, he gave a sigh that had no triumph in it, and turned away toward his cabin.

“Well, there goes the revolution,” he said somberly to himself.  “And here I go to do the rest of the job; and alongside what I’ve got to do, hell would be a picnic!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

STARR TAKES ANOTHER PRISONER

With a slip of paper in his pocket that would have gone a long way toward clearing Helen May, had he only taken the trouble to look at it, Starr rode out in the cool early morning to Sunlight Basin.  He looked white and worn, and his eyes were sunken and circled with the purple of too little sleep and too much worry, for in the three days since he had seen her, Starr had not been able to forget his misery once in merciful sleep.  Only when he was busy with capturing the Junta had he lost for a time the keen pain of his hurt.

Now it was back like an aching tooth set going again with cold water or sweets.  He tried to make himself think that he hated Helen May, and that a girl of that type—­a girl who could lend herself to such treachery—­could not possibly win from him anything but a pitying contempt.  He told himself over and over again that he was merely sore because a girl had “put something over on him”; that a man hated to have a woman make a fool of him.

He tried to gloat over the fact that he had found her out before she had any inkling of how he felt toward her; he actually believed that!  He tried not to wince at the thought of her at Fort Bliss, a Federal prisoner, charged with conspiring against the government.  She must have known the risk she took, he kept telling himself.  The girl was no fool, was way above the average in intelligence.  That was why she had appealed to him; he had felt the force of her personality, the underlying strength of her character that had not harshened her outward charm, as strength so often does for a woman.